The Manhattan Project 2: Minutes to Midnight

It has been 20 years since the invention of the atomic bomb, and the superpowers of the world have remained embroiled in an ever-escalating arms race. The production of fissile material no longer poses a challenge for any nation. Instead, the race has switched to the development of a wide range of delivery systems. In a crisis, your nation will need to strike faster and farther from land, sea, and air. Take charge of your nation’s “Nuclear Triad” and always remember: a credible threat is your most effective deterrent!

Minutes to Midnight allows you to play the game you want. From many paths to victory to be able to choose your own game length by setting the adjustable scoring rounds to different intervals. With interesting confrontational mechanics such as controlling another player's coastal waters or third world nation to spying on other player's buildings.

The standalone sequel to The Manhattan Project by the same designer. Command your nation's nuclear weapons program during the cold war.

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Your Objective

You are the leader of a nuclear superpower. With the world on the brink of war, you must develop and deploy nuclear weapon systems of the following types:

Ballistic Submarines

Strategic Bombers

Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs)

Third World Nation Missile Installations

You may also earn points by:

Building Anti-Ballistic Missiles (ABMs)

Testing Nukes in your Mainland

Gaining control over Third World Nations.

Each turn, you must decide to Place Workers or Retrieve Workers. When the final retrieval has been completed, the end of the game is triggered. At the end of the game, the player with the most points is the winner.

- Do I need any previous Manhattan Project games to play this?No, it's a stand alone game.

- Do you lose your nukes when someone new takes control over your Third World nation?No, but they are returned to your personal supply. You never lose a nuke, bomber, or sub by an action from another player, they just return to your supply forcing you to take actions to deploy them again. The only way you actually lose a nuke is if you blow them up in your test site.

- How are subs used?The preview videos didn't mention one very fun aspect of this game and that is the bluffing game played with deploying of submarines to your opponent's coastal waters. When you take the military action you may place up to 2 cards into each player's coastal waters. They can be both decoys or both subs or one of each. Eventually, a player will have his coastal waters full of cards, but he's not sure what is really there, so he's forced to take a military action to sweep for subs. He takes 2 random cards out and returns them to their owners. Any remaining subs may still score during the sub scoring round. Remember the owner of the subs that were chased away can still take another action to deploy them again.

(Note: the game shown in these previews is made of prototype materials. The fInal product will differ.)

Man Vs Meeple Preview:"A smart game"

Bower's Game Corner:"I like it better than Energy Empire"

Watch the recording of the live play through with the designer and our friends at Forged by Geeks:

2 extra NATIONS cards!Brazil and South Africa. Bringing the total Nations able to be played to 12: USA, Soviet Union, Pakistan, Britain, China, Israel, France, North Korea, India, and Germany.

While the prototype has little wooden nuke disks from one of our other games, we can only produce these for this game if we meet this level of support. Otherwise, they will have to be cardboard tokens.

Currently, the wood bits used for the tech track are just 8mm cubes. It would be cooler if we could make them light bulb shaped wood. If we reach this level of support we'll add them to every game!

The score track only goes up to 50 but in longer games, it's not uncommon to go past that score. We know you are all smart enough to remember, but just in case we'll create a +50 score marker for you to fondle before your imminent victory!

Isn't that small disk on your player board tracking how many workers you own rather boring? How about we upgrade it to a meeple-shaped hunk of wood instead!

DIRECT ORDER BONUS:

Another great bonus for our direct order customers (not in the retail version). We have this mini 5 building and 1 card zip-lock bag expansion planned for you. With these 5 unique buildings, you'll have something retail buyers will not. Add to your gameplay experience with these promo building tiles!

Alternate artwork for the tech 1 and 2 bomber tile. Currently, there is a b52 bomber plane on them all but it would be easier to tell these lower-tech planes apart if they had a different image. This is important cause the low tech ones cannot be placed in your opponent's airspace.

There are a LOT of building tiles. As such it is fairly costly to use thicker chipboard on them. We were planning to use 1.5mm but this goal will make these tiles be a full 2mm which is typical of a high-quality board game.

The 4 scorecards were just going to be regular game cards. But since people need to reference these multiple times during the game, picking them might be a bit of a hassle. A solution for this is to turn them into more expensive chipboard. Thicker board means they'll wear better too.

The player boards are made of a thick 400gsm poster paper which has worked well in our previous games. But if you want class and style, this stretch goal will upgrade them to cardboard which would allow you to move them while loaded with bits.